14. GETTING THE SCENES RIGHT - Part 2

I took Susannah as far as the church, about to marry a man she detests because of her father's threats to ill-treat her mother if she doesn't. Then, as the father is walking down the aisle with his daughter, he drops dead of a heart attack. When it is suggested that they continue with the marriage so that her new husband can take charge of things, Susannah rebels and refuses point-blank to do so. Her mother is so brow-beaten that she at first tries to persuade her daughter to do as the groom's father suggests, giving us a further minute or two of doubt about whether the girl will in fact gain her freedom. However, Susannah persuades her mother to stop the marriage and this is a much more satisfying conclusion for the reader, because the young woman is a sympathetic character and it's a miniature happy ending to this part of the story.

4. SIMPLY WRITING THE SCENE BETTER You can often improve on how you have shown a scene by working on dialogue, finding more telling vocabulary to describe the actions, cutting out repetition, and so on. We'll go into the details of this type of word editing in a later article.

5. DOING NOTHING If you decide the scene is just right, then leave it alone and rejoice in your achievement.

CONCLUSION My fourth point (writing a scene better) is what most people consider polishing/editing a manuscript, and of course that's important. But it's not enough and it's not the only thing you can do. I hope I've shown you that it's more important to work on editing the actions than simply to work on the words until quite a late stage in polishing your work.

One of the compliments I most value from readers is that they 'couldn't put the book down' because it means I've done the main job right ie told a story well, with each scene gripping the reader's imagination.

If you go to my web site, you can read first chapters from all my published novels http://www.annajacobs.com

Go To Page: 1 2